WCOOP 6-Max, the Basilique, and Luisinho

I’ve gotten pretty far behind on my daily WCOOP/Montreal reports, but now that the series is over, I’ve got more time (and not so much else to blog about!), so let’s pick up where we left off. My last of these posts dealt with Wednesday September 12, so we’ll pick up here with the Thursday the 13th, which offered a $300 6-Max NLHE.

My table was great, one of the softest I had in the series, but unfortunately they were running great as well.

I’m still not sure about this one. I think there’s a fair chance I can win it here and also be in fine shape if I get it in against the original raiser. The guy who ends up raising the flop, however, has taken an extremely strong line.

I think his range is mostly sets, and assuming he bets non-club turns, I don’t have the right odds to draw against that. Then again that’s an awfully narrow range to put him on, particularly given that he didn’t 3-bet pre-flop, and if we start adding nut flush draws into his range, my equity improves considerably.

Of course it sucks to raise-fold this hand, but that wasn’t my plan when I raised. I just ended up going that way because MP gave me the willies.

I recovered from that hand, then ran into QQ into KK, recovered a bit from that, and then went broke with JTs. The 3-better in this hand is the same guy who min-3-bet with KTs (he also showed something really junky like 86o in an even worse spot than this), so I wasn’t giving a lot of credit to his 3-bet:

Results:
Button had A♣, K♠ (three of a kind, twos).
Hero had 10♦, J♦ (three of a kind, twos).
Outcome: Button won t5392

Image courtesy of Marty Gabel, Flickr Creative Commons

On the bright side, I wrapped up this tournament in time to make a special, 90-minute tour of the Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal offered only twice a week and only during September. The guide was a charming Quebecois about my age who clearly had a deep love for the basilica, which made him a great tour guide for myself and the ten or so old ladies on the tour with me. He spoke a highly understandable but also very unique version of the English language, best exemplified by his promise to, “Say you more of my explainings later.”

The basilica itself is a huge and beautiful building. Its interior makes heavy use of the color blue, which caused it to feel quite different from other churches and cathedrals I’ve visited. This special tour included access to the balconies, ordinarily closed to visitors, giving us the opportunity to look down on the space from above, which was pretty cool.

That evening, I had dinner with someone that regular blog readers and especially commenters ought to recognize: Luisinho! Based on his name, I’d always assumed he lived in either Portugal or Brazil, but apparently he’s French-Portuguese and moved from France to Montreal a few years ago. The city actually has a vibrant Portuguese quarter with which he was a familiar, and we shared a fine meal there, complete with vinho verde, a Portuguese specialty that is not literally green wine but rather “young” wine that has not aged and has a light and refreshing flavor. I’m not much of a wine drinker, but when I do, I prefer whites, and vinho verde was basically a distillation of everything I like about white wine.